This is the fifth entry in the series I am writing about my trip to Ukraine – I didn’t have daily internet access while there so I recorded each day for later publishing.  And later [much later actually] is now.

• It was a beautiful bright sunny day today (although cold!)
• Today we didn’t have breakfast until 10am allowing us some time to sleep in because of the late night before.
• It was a bit of a slower day today because almost everything was closed with it being New Years Day

• 

  The entire team went to McDonald’s for McJoyful and we ended up having lunch there.

• Following McJoyful we came back and got ready for the New Years day service at 4pm at the Krivoy Rog church (Pastor Gregory’s church).
• The service was not a typical service but it was awesome with a wide variety of skits, special music, the worship was amazing, loud, special guests and of course I had the privilege of speaking.
• Before service I met with the pastor and deacons in his office for prayer. Very moving. They had just been talking about not worrying what man thinks about you but being more concerned about what God thinks of you. My contribution was that our identity is in Christ.
• I spoke on the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and who touched Jesus and was healed. The topic of course was faith. What’s interesting, and is something I didn’t know…when I started the message Pastor Gregory turned to Ed and asked him if Ed had said anything to me about what the church had been teaching and Ed said no. Apparently, the focus of the messages for the last month have been on faith! Wow! It’s things like that that are so encouraging. Here I was, not sure what I should speak on and simply trusting that God would direct me to the right message. It turns out that it was the exact message he wanted spoken. Praise God!  I LOVE it when God shows how He is at work even in the smallest things!!
• I gotta say I love speaking with a translator.  While he was translating I had time to think about what I wanted to say next.  Sometimes I had to remember to slow down though…when I get going I can speak pretty fast sometimes.
• Spent some of the evening loading some pictures from Dan’s camera onto my computer and then Walt, Ed, Dan and I watched a quick slideshow of the pictures he had taken so far. It was pretty cool to see the pics of the past week and I’m sure will spark some memories when I view them later.